To Be a Vessel
by The Dragon Mage
Summary: We were given the bare essential's of the Shodaime's wife; Mito, a jinchuuriki, a comfort to the young, frightened Kushina. But what else might she have been? The story of a secret of Konoha's founding. Hashirama/Madara, Tobirama/Mito
1. Senju's Bride

**A/N: **Owing to a fabulous fan theory developed by Googala2 and myself (it involves yaoi, adultery, scandal and epicness, need I say more), I wanted to find out what Hashirama's wife Mito was like. Dear exposition-lacking Kishimoto hasn't provided any details, and I am an insane generator of Naruto character psychology, so there you are.

In summary, I am writing this fic to find out who Mito might have been. I want to sum up the whole character's story all at once, but am too lazy, so I feel bad about the brevity (I plan to have three chapters, so this should be finished soon). But the postulated theory entertained me, and I hope it shall entertain you. To begin, Mito's words to Kushina in chapter 500 gave me a fascinating central point…

Chapter 1: Senju's Bride

_The girl is terrified; Mito can see that. Young Kushina has a pretty face; round and sweet, framed by long red hair; or it would be pretty usually. At the moment her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are filled with tears. The child is visibly trembling._

_ Mito, who is old now, older than the village, but not as old as the demon who resides inside her head, reaches out a hand to the frightened girl._

_ "Kushina," she says softly, "Come here."_

_ This young, talented daughter of Mito's clan, chosen for a task she does not understand and does not want to undertake, falls to her knees before the old woman and begins to sob._

_ "Please, grandmother, don't let them do it! Don't let them! I didn't know what they were planning; I don't want to do it, please!"_

_ Once, Mito would have felt contempt for the way this child shirks her duty out of terror. But the years- and the people she has loved- have taught her compassion for those who cannot bear to obey orders._

_ She places a wrinkled hand on the deep scarlet of Kushina's hair, and another on the girl's clasped hands._

_ The affection of the gesture calms Kushina, Mito can see._

_ "Why are you afraid to be the second jinchuriki of the fox-demon, child?" Mito asks calmly._

_ "Because I don't want to do it! I'll be a monster, I'll be unhappy; nobody will ever want to be my friend! I can't bear to be a freak all my life. At least you _chose _to do it. At least you wanted to!"_

_ Mito laughs, a dry, creaking sound wry in its amusement._

_ "It was my duty, Kushina. My duty. Just as it is now yours. But… there are ways to make a duty bearable. You too, in the end, may choose to suffer a little for the sake of what is necessary…"_

_ Mito's eyes, framed with the fine lines of time, crinkle a little with the reach of memory. She was not like this girl, when she was young. She was nothing but a dutiful daughter of her clan. _

_She smiles to herself, stroking the hair of the now silent child looking up into her face._

_Mito was only her duty, then. Nothing but a vessel which moved as it was told. And she would have been only that, maybe, her whole life long, if it had not been for the man she married, and the one area in which he disregarded what the world wanted of him…_

Mito Uzumaki first hears the rumors on the night before her wedding.

She is a young bride, although not young enough to be ignorant of what she is doing and why. She knows that her clan wants the support and protection of the powerful Senju; knows that her marriage to a man such as Lord Hashirama is both a great honor and a solemn duty. She knows that her future husband's ambition is peace, and that her role in life from the next day onward is helping him achieve it.

Mito also knows, although she is barely nineteen, that this marriage is one of convenience and politics. Whether she can learn to love Hashirama, whom she has never met, is entirely a matter of fate.

Her mother, brushing Mito's long red hair in the dim candlelight of her room, talks of trivial things at first; of her daughter's childhood, of Uzumaki social affairs, of how pretty Mito will look tomorrow, dressed as a bride.

"You are lucky, you know," her mother murmurs, the brush moving in rhythmic strokes, slow and gentle. "To be marrying a handsome man, I mean. I know he's a little older than you, but that can have its advantages as well…"

The woman chuckles and Mito smiles slightly. She has been hearing such comments from the women of her clan for some time now. They faze her little. Duty is duty, after all.

Then her mother's voice grows a little more serious, and Mito's smile fades.

"Now, you're a fine-looking girl, my daughter; not some painted beauty, but good and solid. I'm sure I don't need to tell you how to deal with a man. But, while your father drinks with his cronies and celebrates a match well made, I've been doing some asking around."

The brush slides its way a little more slowly, and her mother seems to pause.

"Everyone says Lord Hashirama is handsome, all right, and as I said you're lucky for it, but a man like that can be trouble. You'll be the wife of a clan leader, and maybe more than a clan leader, some day. You'll have to watch your back, and _his_ eyes. Make sure his gaze doesn't wander."

Mito smiles again, serene.

"You worry too much, mother. The Senju leader is by all accounts an honorable man, and other women don't concern me. The family's reputation will be safe."

The elder Uzumaki makes a slight _hmmm _noise in the back of her throat, an indication that she is not entirely pleased.

"It's not _women_ I'm concerned about," she mutters.

Hashirama Senju, as it turns out, _is _a very handsome man. He is tall, much taller than Mito is, with pleasant dark eyes and hair longer than hers. His smile, while not easily won, is kind.

He is, from her careful observation over the first month of their marriage, honest, persuasive and extremely devoted to his ideals.

His life, as both a military commander and a clan head, is hectic, but he never loses his calm or forgets his goals.

Hashirama is both attentive and intelligent; he understands her position as the young wife of a powerful man and denies her no information or aid in making her more comfortable. She suspects, although she cannot confirm it, that his strength can be ruthless as well as benevolent, but he displays nothing but compassion towards her.

Mito has more than she has ever hoped for in a husband; or nearly. She avoids the more personal of her clan's questions with a suitable blush, and eventually the queries fade. All seems to be going well, and Mito cannot deny that she and Hashirama are fairly well suited to each other.

There is only one problem. He will not sleep with her.

He shakes his head on their wedding night, a silent gesture of refusal, and she is too unsure to ask him questions.

At first, her youth might have explained his reluctance. But that excuse, which he offers and she, somewhat discomfited by the conversation, accepts, falls apart after a while. He is only six years older than her, and other lords married girls of half their age with scarcely a qualm.

She does not tell her mother about this strange discrepancy in her arranged relationship. It is too embarrassing, too likely to cause trouble. And Mito, who must now manage a new household filled with people who worship her husband and are only distantly welcoming towards her, does not want to cause trouble.

Mito does not tell her mother. In fact she tells no one; she explains it away by reminding herself how busy Hashirama is, how hard he is working to forge his alliances, to achieve his peace. He comes home to their room at night bloodstained and exhausted, and tells her of constant fights between himself and other clan leaders, leaders who want to be in charge of the future in his place.

She comforts him as best she can, accepts his quiet gratitude with equanimity, and falls asleep beside him telling herself that, in a few months, when the last alliances are made and the village he wants to create is being constructed, her husband will look at her as more than a political ally.

Sometimes, Mito wonders what exactly her mother meant, on the night before her wedding. But then she rejects the thoughts. This is her duty, after all. She, like Hashirama, is very busy, and an old woman's cryptic gossip is not important enough to worry over.

Mito hears the girls whispering as she walks briskly along the corridor to the kitchens, intending to begin the dinner preparations. She nearly ignores them, dismissing the silly pastimes of maidservants who should be cleaning rather than hiding out in empty rooms, but a word or two reaches Mito's ears, and she stops abruptly.

"Lord Hashirama… That young Uchiha… they say…"

The only hint of her sudden suspicion a slight widening of her eyes, Mito leans her head against the door, silent as only an eavesdropping kunoichi can be.

"I heard that last time he went to negotiate with the Uchiha, Lord Senju disappeared from the camp at night!" one voice whispers. "The men say he goes to visit Madara."

The low reply is giggly with scandal and excitement.

"Madara? That's the clan leader! They say he's so frightening one of our envoys wet himself when Madara glared at him! And his skill in battle is so great that they call him a war god. But I heard he's handsome, too, and although everyone tries no woman ever gets near him!"

"Yes! He's scary all right. But as for his looks, I've heard _beautiful _is a better description than _handsome. _All the high born Uchiha men look like women and defend themselves by fighting like demons! And at least half of them are-" The voice drops too low to hear on the last word.

There are titters. Mito is pressed close to the door now, ignoring the squashing of her carefully arranged hair against the wood.

"Madara's young, too. Younger than Lord Hashirama. And Lord Hashirama likes to duel him a little too much, the men say. He comes back from their fights scratched, but never very badly injured, and if he bathes afterward nobody is allowed near."

"Ooooh," says the other girl, "Those Uchihas are always causing trouble. You know, I heard that at one of Lord Hashirama's meetings Izuna-"

Mito pulls her head away. She has heard enough.

For a moment, Hashirama's wife stands in the corridor, frozen, considering what she has heard. Mito may be only nineteen, but she is cool-headed and well trained for the position she is now in. She does not panic. She does not fly into a rage. She merely thinks for a long moment, mulling over all the possible information.

Then she walks off to organize dinner. A clan leader's house must stay well fed.

But, of course, there is a point where the duties of the Senju's bride are outweighed by her worry for her marriage. A few days later, Mito knocks quietly on the door of her husband's brother, Tobirama. She has no evidence, as yet; only suspicions; but in a battle not acting on one's suspicions can kill you, and she is still a kunoichi, despite her domestic position. Mito needs information; she needs an advisor; as much as she regrets admitting it, she needs help.

She does not know her brother-in-law very well, although what Mito has seen of him she likes. He is not overly talkative, but what he does say is never foolish or unnecessary, and his sardonic sense of humor is one of the few things which can make Hashirama laugh. Mito met Tobirama at her wedding, and although his cold, fierce appearance intimidated her, she felt that she could trust him.

Now, she is about to act on that feeling. Her worries are shocking in their content, but he is the one person who, if the rumors are true, has no possible reason to betray her husband or her new clan.

Mito knocks again, slightly louder, and the door opens. He stands in the doorway before her; taller than she is, although not as tall as her husband.

"Lady Uzumaki," Tobirama says, smiling. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

Mito, despite herself, is offset by the formality, but she continues to meet his eyes. She is not a woman who bows her head to anyone.

"Lord Senju, just Mito is perfectly acceptable. I came on personal business.

"In that case, call me Tobirama, Mito, and please come inside."

She follows him in, and as soon as the door closes, she turns to face him, serious and somewhat urgent.

"It's about Hashirama that I wanted to talk."

Tobirama's angular face becomes a little more grave.

"You look very solemn. Is something the matter with him?"

Mito glances at the floor, briefly, and then decides to simply be honest. Something about this man tells her that he does not like sycophants or tolerate dilution of the truth.

"I have been hearing rumors about him and Madara Uchiha."

"What kind of rumors?"

He scrutinizes her expression with slanted scarlet eyes, and she answers plainly.

"That they're sleeping together, for a start."

Tobirama turns his head away and sighs deeply. One hand runs through his hair in an absentminded fashion.

"I can't deny that I'd heard something similar. And Hashirama acts strange around Madara, that's certain, although he might merely be worried about the man trying to kill him. Whatever other activities they engage in, my brother and Madara certainly like to _fight_."

"So you aren't sure if the rumors are true?" Mito asks quietly.

"No, I'm not. But can't you ask Hashi yourself? You are his wife; there are questions a brother shouldn't try to get answers about, and this is one of them."

For the second time in this man's company, Mito is unsettled. She is not accustomed to embarrassment, but Tobirama seems to provoke it easily. She cannot help but stutter a little when she speaks.

"I… I'm his wife only in name, at this point. He's never laid a finger on me."

Tobirama, for the first time, looks blatantly shocked. His eyes grow wide, and the hand stops its path through his spikes of silver hair.

"_Why_?" he says, seemingly unable to comprehend the statement.

"I don't _know, _Tobirama!" Mito says sharply. "I am endeavoring to find out!"

The sound of his name seems to steady him. Those strange magenta eyes focus on her, appraising her for a moment.

"I think the best course of action for now," he says, almost musingly, "Is to wait. This is a difficult time; Hashi's under a ridiculous amount of pressure, as are we all. There is no room for dealing with this, as much as I would like to help you. Tell me if anything else happens; if you hear anything else, and I too will keep my ears open. The whole mess may work itself out. After all, Hashi is certainly not in love with Madara. The Uchiha leader is a demon with an angel's face; the only one alive who could love him is his little brother."

He smiles wryly, and Mito is somewhat comforted.

She dips her head in gratitude.

"Thank you, Tobirama. I will wait and see."

She exits his room and goes about her duties, no hint of discomposure visible. Mito Uzumaki, who is now one of the Senju, is above all else a kunoichi. She knows how to wait, how to let conditions change before she acts. And she is not alone, now; there is an ally in the form of her husband's brother, a formidable man with a pleasant manner and more intelligence, she thinks, than he is given credit for.

That night, Mito discusses with her husband how the new, planned village should be structured, making a formal system for its serving shinobi. She is happy, or happy enough. Hashirama, whatever the maidservants and foot soldiers say, is a good man, who values her advice. And, as Tobirama asserted, it isn't as if he can be in _love_ with Uchiha Madara. That would be ridiculous.


	2. Hokage's Wife

**A/N: **w00t, chapter 2. The plot thickens. This romance is beginning to fascinate me. I had absolutely no interest in the second Hokage before I wrote this, and now he positively amuses me.

In this chapter I get to describe Hashi-sama covered in bites and bruises. *evil author chuckle.* God I love fandom.

Chapter 2: Hokage's Wife

"_Grandmother?"_

_Kushina's voice brings Mito back to the present. The first whispers of trouble and the color Tobirama's eyes fade; instead there is a softly lit bedroom, a child who needs answers._

"_I…" Kushina begins, "I don't understand what you mean by necessary. I don't _want _to be a jinchuriki, and have a demon inside my head."_

_Kushina falls silent for a moment, seemingly distraught, but Mito notices that the girl's former terror has been replaced by doubt._

"_Why do I have to do it?" Kushina asks, plaintive, and Mito watches the child's puzzled face, the fall of red hair, so like her own before time bleached it silver._

_Silver. Silver and red._

_Mito shakes herself a little. The past is past, and the man she loved is long dead; long dust in his grave, remembered only by a carving on a monument and a name in the annals of history. This is her duty. In the name of her village, the village she has served, and for the whole shinobi world, she must ensure that the Kyuubi is kept away from the future._

_For many years, duty is all she has possessed. And she has fulfilled it gladly, and kept silent about the one aspect of her obligations which she did not obey._

_Everyone has their weaknesses. Even Mito, a young kunoichi with a level head; even the honorable, honored First Hokage._

_Duty is all she has, now. Duty… and memory._

As the village of Konoha rises from its foundations amid the trees and mountains of the Land of Fire, a whisper secretes itself among the new inhabitants.

_"Madara Uchiha is Lord Hashirama's lover."_

It is not a widely heard whisper; it concentrates among the servants and the carpenters; the non-shinobi inhabitants of a village ruled by ninja. It will not spread far, and has little impact on the adoration most of the citizens have for their Senju founder.

It is a quiet whisper. It inspires some bawdy jokes ("Madara is the Lord's mistress" etc.) and a few arguments in bars (over honor and the like), but it will not make it to the level of Scandal. It will never end up in Konoha's history books; most people will never even know it existed.

But Mito, the sharp-eyed, keen-eared and devoted consort of Hashirama Senju knows that it exists. Tobirama, younger brother and loyal second in command to that same Hashirama Senju; he knows. He discusses it with his brother's wife, when they have spare moments in the never-ending cacophony which is life in new Konoha's politics. They make good co-conspirators in keeping an eye on trouble; they are comfortable in each other's company, and the topic of the rumor is important to both of them. They keep watch, and see things.

Mito notices that her husband goes missing more and more often from their -still platonic- bed. He does not come home until late at night, and sometimes not until dawn. She is never alone with him, anymore; they work together in public as the efficient team they are, but were it not for her title of Lady Senju she would forget that they are married.

Tobirama observes that his brother spends hours in the company of Madara Uchiha; down by the river, in the newborn forests surrounding the village, walking the streets. Sometimes, Tobirama perceives a smile gracing the Uchiha leader's lips as he stands beside his former enemy. And he sees Hashirama laugh; a rare enough event to be both welcome and disturbing.

Still, the red-haired woman and her Senju brother-in-law are both cautious people; he who can predict the numbers of his surrounding enemies with merely a touch to the ground does not want to _create_ enemies with a revealed intrigue, and she has grown to care deeply about her adopted clan; her new village. Mito does not wish to jeopardize peace with something as unimportant as her husband's (possibly imaginary) affair.

They wait. And Konoha grows upward from the ground like a vast forest, guided by the man who everyone suspects will become its first leader.

Then one day in the early hours of the dawn, Hashirama slips through the door of his house only to be met with his younger brother's blank stare.

"Where were you?" Tobirama inquires mildly. "I've been waiting for you all night."

Hashirama meets the pair of impassive crimson eyes with his own unreadable dark ones.

"I had things to attend to, Tobi," he says. His tone is not unkind, but there is steel in his voice. This is not a thing to ask questions about.

But Tobirama Senju has spent years ignoring his brother's rare moments of ruthless command, and for Mito's sake he is willing to question the unquestionable.

"Hmm," he says, "All right."

Then, just as Hashirama moves to walk past him into the house, the pale-haired man reaches out a hand. Long fingers brush against a bruise-like discoloration on Hashirama's throat, just above his collar.

"Where did you get that?" asks Tobirama, fixing his brother with maroon eyes that also convey steel.

Hashirama freezes for a moment and then grabs the door handle behind him and pulls it closed with a soft thump.

"Tobi," he murmurs, "Not now. Please not now."

The other man shakes his head.

"_Now_. Mito, your _wife_, is upstairs alone in your bed and I am neither a naïve virgin nor a fool. _That, _my brother, is a bite mark on your neck, and I want to know who put it there."

For a moment, Tobirama's mind leaves his troublesome brother and remembers Mito's sharp eyes, the cadence of her voice; the vivid color of her hair, how glad he is to do this for her. He does not know why he thinks of such a thing, not really, although the ghost of a suspicion is already coiling under the surface.

Hashirama makes a sound in his throat somewhere between a sigh and a growl of exasperation. Then he pulls his shirt over his head, throwing the garment to the floor.

Tobirama stares. His brother's smooth coffee-colored skin is like the artwork of an infuriated painter whose brushes are fitted with sharp edges and teeth. Lines of scarlet, splashes of rose-pink and the purple-blue blossoms of bruises ornament him; brands either of ownership or of highly contested submission.

Hashirama's torso is a mess of bite marks and scratches; the red crescents of harsh fingernails line his back, and it is obvious that the abuse extends below his waist.

There are scars, too; some of them older than others, but several of them cannot possibly be explained away as battle mementos.

Hashirama looks into his brother's face and waits.

"_Hell_, Hashi," the other man says at last, "Do you have to _rape _the Uchiha or is he truly as crazy a sadist as all the rumors claim?"

Hashirama runs a hand through his dark silk hair, looking infinitely tired.

"So you know about Madara, then."

"Yes."

"Have you told Mito?"

Tobirama smiles sardonically.

"Mito told me. She's suspected you for a long time, Hashi, and kept her silence. That's a good woman you have. Maybe the best one I've ever met. Her husband is incurably addicted to a possessive madman and she merely goes about as usual and sleeps alone without complaint."

Hashirama looks at the younger man, and for a moment believes that Tobirama's voice is just a little wistful.

Then the moment passes, and his brother is forceful again.

"_Why_, Hashi?" Tobirama asks incredulously. "Why _Madara_? He is beautiful, I will grant you that, but everyone in the village knows he's nearly lost his mind since… since whatever happened to Izuna two years ago. He hates you, whatever he lets you do to him in your spare time. He hates Konoha, as his constant dissention shows. He hates _peace_. Why him? Your odd tastes in bed partners are known to me, but you are _married _now, and this hurts Mito!"

Hashirama looks at his brother, strong and passionate and, at this moment, _angry, _and he does not know what to say. His obsession with Madara runs counter to everything he has ever been or done or said. His… his _fixation _with the younger man is a hunger that cannot be filled, an imbalance which he has embraced although he can guess the pain it will bring him, someday. Maybe someday soon.

Both the Senju brothers are wise, clever shinobi who are not used to being ruled by their emotions. Hashirama, whose feelings for Madara are more complicated and tangled than anything he has ever felt, has no means to communicate them to his younger sibling. Madara, to him, is memory; of a warrior boy with a hungry clan, once long ago in the snow. Of a young man to whom tenderness is poisoned bread and forbidden fruit. Of a murderer who does not know how to forgive himself; an older brother who craves justice but knows only war.

However, those memories are secrets, not for their content, but for their significance. He cannot speak of them, and likely Tobirama would not understand.

So Hashirama says something which is close to an explanation, and which comforts him with its simplicity. It is also true, although truth is more complex than it seems.

"I love Madara, Tobi. As long as we live, we will fight; I expect that some day Madara will kill me, or I will be forced to kill him. But I love him, and I can't tell you why."

Tobirama stares for one long moment at his brother's solemn dark eyes, at the wounds on his chest and the marks of hatred- or affection- on his skin. With Madara, he imagines, the two things must be easily interchangeable.

Then the younger Senju brother walks out of the house with quick strides, into the pre-dawn shadows.

Mito sits silently, her eyes averted from the silver-haired man before her. Tobirama shakes his head. He is also looking at the floor.

"If there is one thing Hashirama has always been, it is levelheaded. Our allies trust him because he is reasonable to them and unyielding to his enemies. His… his _fascination _for Madara is a part of him I've never seen before."

He raises his eyes to the woman in front of him, and there is regret in his voice.

"Hashi said he loves this Uchiha, Mito. And if all the rumors are to be believed this has been going on for a long time. I didn't want to think it was true, but…"

Tobirama pauses, wincing a little.

"I saw the marks on him. And either my brother is a fervent masochist and I never noticed it, or he will tolerate extraordinary things to keep his Uchiha happy."

Mito smiles slightly, more out of sorrow than amusement.

"Oh Tobi…you told me, once, that even if the stories were true Hashi certainly wasn't in love with Madara. That was why we waited, why we endured; because it had to be simple attraction or a self-destructive tendency. It had to be. But now I've spent three years as wife to a man who, although I respect him, I will never be part of, and he's in love with the leader of the Uchiha clan. What… what went wrong?"

Tobirama looks, truly _looks _at the woman who sits like a porcelain doll before him, her hair perfectly arranged, no sign of tears in her eyes. She is not picturesquely beautiful, not in the fierce, wild way of the Uchiha or with the graceful curves of romance novels. But her strength is, he thinks, far greater than his. She is willing to be used as an ally, made a vessel for Hashirama's dreams, and all without repayment.

He looks at her, and wants to make her happy. If she must be a vessel, at least there can be more than dreams in her. She deserves more than someone else's hopes. She deserves love.

Out of the hidden suspicion he has lived with for a stretch of months, a long year, the realization hits him like a hammer blow, and Tobirama Senju nearly laughs aloud.

But instead, he starts to speak, in his usual musing way, and as the words arrive Mito raises her head from its bowed acceptance and stares at him with widening eyes.

"When I left the house this morning," Tobirama says, "I didn't understand my brother. But now I do. Now I do. None of this is your fault, Mito, or mine, or anyone's. Hashi needs something only Madara can give him, needs some precious thing which the rest of the world will never comprehend. He's getting peace for the whole ninja world, maybe, but getting Madara is only for himself. I know what he's feeling. Without duty we are nothing, but there must be something within duty, something more… Have you ever wanted something to be _yours_, Mito? Only yours, without obligation or expectation or ridiculous complexity? I have. I do."

He stops, almost abruptly, and looks at her with that angled, usually impassive face which is full of passion now.

Mito cannot tear her eyes away from him.

"What… what do you want, Tobi?" she asks, unsure, unable to move within her normal frame of reference- _duty, obligation, expectation- _the matrix in which she has spent three long years, or perhaps more- maybe her whole life.

He grins at her, bizarrely happy even though he is about to break every shinobi rule there is and quite a few moral ones as well.

"_I want you_," says Tobirama Senju, and then he takes two steps forward, pulls his brother's wife into his arms and kisses her, because the impulse is there and this is not a mission, not a duty; this is a chosen crime.

For a moment, Mito, the woman who can cope with anything, does not know what to do. His mouth is warm on hers and his arms are strong, and this is a _terrible thing. _

She pulls away, a little breathless, and he sees the look in her eyes and lets go with great reluctance. His face is that of a man sentenced to death, but willing, now, to be executed.

"Tobi," she says, "Tobi, _no. _I can't… You shouldn't…"

But the voice in the back of Mito's mind, the one which knows that she is good and obedient and terribly, terribly lonely every night in the dark, it whispers to her. It says that Hashirama, her husband, her _friend_, will never be her lover. It knows; _she _knows; that only bitterness awaits the vessel which cannot also be human. She is more than the Hokage's wife. She must be more.

Mito looks at Tobirama, standing unfalteringly and waiting for judgment.

"To hell with it," she says, and kisses her husband's brother, in order to be more than someone's daughter, someone's companion, someone's wife.


	3. Tobirama's Mistress

**A/N: **Hey look! Lying author tells lies!

So, I was writing the final chapter, the Valley of the End, all dramatic, and I was like, 'wait, according to my evil conspiracy theory timeline, Mito should be pregnant right now. And Hashi should know about her affair. What went wrong?'

So I wrote another chapter to be in the middle. And this is it. Since the last chapter is already half written, I should finish this soon (and yes, I said that last time, and I'm a lying liar who lies, yes, yes. But trust me. Just do).

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed or placed this on alerts so far! It means a lot to me.

Chapter 3: Tobirama's Mistress

"_You want to know why it is necessary that someone carry this burden," Mito Uzumaki says. "You want to know, also, why it is you who has been asked to do this. I will try to answer you."_

_Mito speaks to the girl keeling before her without frivolity, with the formality of a woman used to communicating about life and death. If there is one virtue of shinobi society it is that they never lie to children solely for the sake of some imagined preservation of innocence. A ninja is a ninja, however young._

_Appreciating this straightforwardness, and a little calmed by it, Kushina nods. She will listen._

"_Someone," Mito goes on, "Must be a prison for the fox in order to keep safe the rest of the world; not just this village; all the villages. The nine-tails causes chaos and destruction; it tempts people. Power always tempts people, you know."_

_She pauses, briefly, thinking of a young Uchiha with wild hair, long ago; the first in a lineage of men who would try to wield the kyuubi like a weapon._

"_If the fox is contained, Kushina, then its host can direct it; keep it under control. And human greed can be met with human strength, too. I have been offered riches and power by many nations in exchange for fighting in their wars; I have refused. And that is where you come in; a jinchuuriki must be strong and brave, and also able to judge the difference between war and peace; between a liar and an honorable shinobi."_

_The girl looks up at her and asks the question Mito has been waiting for._

"_But how can I be happy? You say I have to be strong, but how can I be that if everyone hates me, if I don't have anything to fight the kyuubi with myself?"_

_ There is silence in the shady room, with its hangings and broad bed. It is heavy silence, bearing the weight of sincere inquiry. A question has been asked._

_In the lattice of her past scattered with bright memories, Mito looks for an answer._

The night after Tobirama kisses her, Mito sleeps beside the place in her bed where her husband should be and turns duty over and over in her mind.

She wants Tobi in a way that she never wanted Hashirama, and the pull of attraction is both frightening and oddly _right_.

She is also afraid, or perhaps cautious; wary of disappointing the people who trust her. But, in this village where she is the Hokage's wife before she is a woman or a kunoichi, Mito is lonely. However, she was lonely within her own clan, too; she has been lonely all her life. That is the point.

Tobirama is the only person Mito has ever known whom she could say anything to. They began with one secret, one hidden thing shared, and now she cannot live without him. He is not a duty; he is a pleasure, only. She has never had anything without a tinge of obligation attached.

Mito lies in her bed and, like a good diplomat, a negotiator between right and wrong, weighs the options. She weighs her own suffering beside what Tobirama is to her; she weighs her duty beside what she wants.

Mito spends the next day dictating letters to the new Kazekage and the factions which oppose him, the rippling lines of politics and faux-patriotic argument standing in stark contrast to the social undercurrents of her village.

She occupies her mind with all the extraneous phenomena of her job, and comes home late that night to find her bed empty once more.

To be Hashirama's wife is to deal in economics and appearances, the passion of a community and the opinions of a scattered world.

To be Tobirama's mistress, she decides that night, finally coming to a reckoning of her choices- would be to enter another sort of world- one which the women of her clan had transferred in their gossip, one which she has never stepped into. Mito has stood to one side, always, considering the muddle with a kind of detached non-interest.

What it would be like to be in love with Tobirama Senju is an unknown thing. The Hokage's wife flees the idea, appalled.

But Mito; Mito wants the knowledge.

On the third night, confident that Hashirama will not be home until dawn, Mito slips out of her house and into the silent streets of the sleeping village, on her own journey.

When Mito climbs onto the sill of Tobirama's bedroom window, traps greet her, as she expected. She avoids the shuriken which whistles past her head, leaps to the floor in a dive over a tripwire and holds up her hands in a gesture of appeasement.

"Tobi, it's me," she says; just to be sure he has noticed. There is a proverb about what happens to people who wake sleeping tigers, but to disturb the rest of a powerful shinobi is infinitely more dangerous.

"Mito," Tobirama says, dropping the kunai he is holding. Her eyes scan the tousled strands of his hair in pale moonlight, the way he looks, still poised for battle, clothed in nothing but sleeping trousers, eyes wide.

"Hashi's not home," she says, succinctly. "I thought you might appreciate the company."

"I've been wondering if I would ever see you again."

She gestures with one hand, indicating her presence.

"Well, I'm here now. You haven't frightened me away just yet."

He smiles; a sideways quirk of the lips, almost contemplative.

"You are not quite what I expected you to be, Mito Uzumaki."

"What did you expect?"

He stands like a cat, poised in the dark, and his eyes watch her. She thinks, then, that what he says next will be another kind of undercurrent; more serious than it appears.

His voice is low, almost husky.

"I thought my brother would marry a modest girl with a powerful clan and a mediocre mind. That's the ideal in a political alliance, you know. And then I met you, at the wedding. You were so young, and yet older than I was, in some ways…"

"I defied your expectations?"

"Maybe. You dressed like a modest girl, as expected, but you ran the household like a kunoichi waging war. Your clan is strong, but you are also strong; stronger than I am, in some ways. And you told me that your husband was sleeping with Madara Uchiha as if you were reporting plumbing issues."

He stops, having taken a step towards her. They are closer, now. She smiles.

"Everything was just another problem to me, for a long time."

"Am I just another problem? I might create problems; I have a knack for being involved in them."

"Do you think this is a bad idea?"

Tobirama shrugs.

"It might be. But the inhabitants of a shinobi village live at war. We could be dead tomorrow. Maybe that's what my brother is thinking, wherever he and Madara are tonight."

It happens so fast- they both move forward, and there is no space to be apart.

"I didn't expect your hair to be red, either," Tobirama murmurs, his fingers tangled in it. "I didn't expect to fall in love with you."

Mito's hands splay across his back, feeling warm skin and the thin lines of battle scars. In the back of her mind, the Hokage's wife with her etiquette asks what Mito is doing, there in the dark with her husband's brother.

Tobirama kisses her, soft at first. In their tangled progression towards the bed he steps on the handle of his dropped kunai and swears, but it does not matter.

The Hokage's wife asks questions. But Mito has the answer, because love is clarity as well as undercurrents.

The answer is: she is learning a new thing. A new way of being. And it is worth the risk. She has learned that from Hashirama; the worth of love.

Five months pass in Konoha; in the shinobi village with its politics and its secrets.

Mito's life seems made up of mirrored surfaces. There are the hours of her work, her duty. There are the hours spent with Hashi; their relationship (once like that of friends who do not spend much time together) now grown silent. She wonders if he should be told of her affair and he wonders if she knows of his; if she will speak of it.

Then there are the hours stolen with Tobi in the dark. She learns quickly, or so he says sometimes with vanished breaths, his hair a riot of moonlight. He tells her, one night, that he had barely believed her when she said that Hashi hadn't touched her. "I couldn't imagine anyone keeping their hands off you," he whispers, the sometimes-noble flatterer. Every day she managed to forget the subtleties of him, until nighttime offers sudden recollection.

There is another night, too, when Mito tries to coax out of him the choices he had to make in doing this.

"Why?" she asks, lying beside him, watching the way his eyes look, half-lidded, satiated and drooping towards slumber. "Why sleep with your brother's wife?"

He frowns briefly; he does not like hearing labels used for her, even when they are entirely accurate.

"Because," he says at last, "Although I love my brother, he is nearly a madman. And this is his village. His child, his wife, his family; Konoha is all this for him. It used to make me jealous. But then I started falling in love with you, and I wasn't thinking about how you were his wife. I was thinking about how you were someone else who was alone."

Mito smiles.

"So you're with me because your brother likes peace and Uchiha men more than he likes you?"

He swats at her half-heartedly with the hand she is not holding.

"I'm with you because you are clever and beautiful and you make me happy, foolish woman. My brother is… hard to understand, sometimes. But with you, I think I know what makes him do the things he does. What makes him love the village, and Madara."

And then, because he is tired and Mito has unfairly asked him questions after sex, Tobirama's eyes close. She doesn't make him keep talking. Mito merely falls asleep beside him, wondering which of them had to make the harder choice, in the end.

Five months of broken mirrors. And then, two weeks in which Mito's suspicion begins to grow, germinating in her subconscious, flowering in her dreams and driving her, at last, to make a discreet visit.

One morning, Mito goes to see one of the Uchiha women, asking for advice. The irony is killing, but many desperate, childless wives are found among this bloodline-encumbered group of shinobi. Money is there to be made, and experts with the knowledge Mito needs abound.

Questions are asked, examination occurs, and news is delivered. It is all pleasant enough. The dark-haired Uchiha woman who at last offers a diagnosis is somewhat puzzled to see how terrified the Hokage's wife looks, when she is told.

An hour later, Mito stands in her kitchen waiting for Hashirama to come home, a woman frozen in time, lit by the afternoon sun. Her hands are already making themselves comfortable across her belly; some protective instinct, perhaps, or it might just be paranoia. Nothing shows, yet. She has nearly three months before anything does, but a façade can only go on so long.

Mito is not sure how she feels. This, this lack of surety, has never happened before; even in the furtive concealment of the preceding months, she knew that she loved Tobi and that it would be dangerous to sleep with him. Then, it was merely a matter of reconciling the perils with what she wanted, however hard the choice.

Now… now Mito is standing here, pregnant with her lover's child, waiting for her husband to come home.

What will she do with a baby? What does anyone do? She has so many duties already… and what will she tell people, tell shinobi, tell her child when it grows old enough? Her husband is a man with a kekkei genkai, a unique genetic code. This baby will never be a wielder of Mokuton, and while that may be excused on counts of chance inheritance what if it looks like Tobi? People will guess. Her clan will guess; her mother will, and all the careful concealment of time will come crashing down.

Hashirama walks into the kitchen and is met with late afternoon sunlight and the flaming red of his wife's hair, the worry on her face. He is tired (he sleeps little, nowadays, and Madara demands ever more of him) but anxiety is infectious. He has never seen Mito openly distraught before; he wonders if this is the day that they finally talk about their marriage (or their lack of one).

The first Hokage stands in the doorway, passive, prepared. He is ready to deal with his own sins; his own secrets.

Instead, Mito turns around and says in a quiet voice,

"I'm pregnant with your brother's child."

It is a straightforward statement; somewhat dramatic, but it conveys the point.

For a long moment, Hashirama is silent. He has never been a man to react instantly to any news; verbal outrage or shock is foreign to him. He thinks about what his wife has just told him, all its implications. Then he asks,

"Do you love him?"

Mito almost laughs. It is not the thing for a cuckolded husband to respond with, but it is perfectly appropriate for Hashirama.

"Yes," she says, "Yes."

Hashirama's eyes are lit with molten gold in the sunlight, like illumination after rain. He is, she reflects for the hundredth time, a very handsome man, although there are no laugh lines around his mouth, no marks of humor such as her own lover bears.

"You know about Madara?" he asks.

She nods.

"I know. I've known for a long time, in a roundabout way. Tobi affirmed it, and then he told me it didn't matter. He said he understood having someone for yourself; someone to hold on to."

Hashirama looks at her with the infinite grief of a man who wants to be jealous but cannot muster the self-righteousness.

"I wish I could have made you happy," he says, "I wish it. I wish it so much that it would be easy to loathe my brother for being successful in my place."

"I hated you," Mito says, simply. "I hated you for a long time, in fits and starts. Under the surface, for a moment at night, I hated you. But if I live as if your loving an Uchiha was my fault I'll never be anything but bitter. Forgiveness is always a little selfish, in the end."

She looks at him.

"What will we tell people?" she asks, and the question is an enormous relief. Now, for the first time, she and Hashirama are co-conspirators, allied in their secrets. If they cannot be husband and wife, at least their lives will intersect here, over this child.

"We will tell them the truth," the Hokage answers. "That I am glad to raise a child in this village, a child of the Senju and the Uzumaki. I may be a terrible husband, but I can at least be enough of a father- even a false one- to make up for that."

Then, at last, Mito does laugh. She laughs until she cries, collapsed on the kitchen floor in a heap of mirth, because this is all so strange. By all the laws of narrative and human foolishness she should be angry, Hashi should be angry, Tobirama should be deeply anguished by this whole affair. Instead, the only one who is angry is Madara, somewhere, and he is always angry over one thing and another, being who he is.

Instead of what, according to all the warnings of her mother, should be happening, Mito is not steeling herself to give birth to a baby alone and undefended. Her husband, who, it occurs to her, is naturally inclined to teach and care for anything which grows within his area of duty, will be, if not the father, at least the parent of this bastard child. Her lover, whom she must tell, oh, dear, she must tell Tobi, will probably be pleased not to have to hide from his brother any longer.

It is so ridiculous that Mito laughs, overcome with mirth in front of the bewildered Hashirama. It is all so ridiculous. So silly. And, quite possibly, it is all right.

But it is only all right for a while; for a week, for seven days, for what seems so short a span of time.

There is only space in the speeding onrush of the world for Tobirama to rejoice, for the Senju brothers to have one last layer of understanding, for Mito to come to terms with the fact that this offspring of hers is going to have a very complicated upbringing. There is space to breath, but that is all.

And then, triggered by fear for his war-weary clan, jealousy over Hashirama's capacity to balance emotion and responsibility; triggered by his own pride, Madara Uchiha leaves the village. He flees, towards the border, towards the place which history will name the Valley of the End.

And Hashirama does not even have time to tell his wife or his brother where he is going. He merely begins to run, chasing Madara, chasing the precarious, fragile world he has built and a universe of battle.

Mito, walking out the door of her house under the bright sun, sees her husband with flying hair and panic in his eyes run past her, towards the forest, out of the village.

She stands in the doorway, suddenly afraid; something has gone wrong, she knows it. Another test has arrived. Maybe the greatest one. Maybe the end.


	4. Mito, Jinchuuriki

**A/N: **For those who have been reading as I update, some news: I've done editing on all the chapters, but the 3rd one is particularly changed. For this you may thank xJasmine and my obsessive compulsive desire to be consistently awesome all the time. Check the 3rd chapter out; it got better!

This is, officially, the end (except not really because I'll probably write an epilogue with some stuff that didn't fit here. Thank xJasmine again). I know there's been a bit of a tone change from the beginning, but the story had more force than I expected and I think it still turned out all right. (I also didn't actually write the Valley of the End fight; I kind of suck at ninja battles. Forgive me.)

Mito's son's name is the result of me, Google and a Japanese name website. It allegedly means "harmonious hope." If that is hilariously wrong in some way, you may inform me and I shall gladly change it. Thank you.

Chapter 4: Mito, Jinchuuriki

_Mito's aged right hand still rests on the bright softness of Kushina's hair. The child still kneels, lonely, afraid; the question (How do I do this, how do I fight?) still hangs in the air, its answer only half finished, but despite all this the world has changed._

_ It has been many years since Mito truly remembered, with all the bright clarity of distant sunlight, what Tobirama was like. There has been the village to watch; her grandchildren (so grown-up, now) to raise; a life to live._

_ But the answer to this impossible question; a question she has never been asked, she who has been a jinchuuriki, alone and without accolades, for all these years; the answer lies in Tobirama. In how she loved him; in how she has carried that love for all these years. And the answer is in Hashirama also, her husband, who fought for what he loved, so long ago._

_ Both of them fought, Mito and Hashirama. Both of them lived through the battles. But in the end, it was she who was victorious._

_ He lost a lover and a rival and the strength to hope; she gained a duty and a struggle and something else, too, in the end; something to keep. Something to live for._

_ Mito smiles as she strokes the red, red hair of the girl kneeling before her._

_ "You were brought here- we were brought here- to be the Kyuubi's vessels…"_

_ Mito stops for a moment, waiting, and the memory comes, the last piece, the slip and slide of images over the years- making a whole. Making a past._

_ Here, here is the answer. Love come full circle, doing what it was meant to do._

For days, the whispers have filled the village.

Not the harmless, fleeting breaths of rumors and amusement now, but the dark hypotheses of panicked politics.

_Madara is unhappy_, they say. _He is not Hokage; his clan will not fight to make him Hokage. The Uchiha are done with fighting, and their leader will abandon them. Madara will leave Konoha._

The rumors had worried Mito, but she has other things to worry about, other concerns beside a crazy Uchiha and his pride.

But when she sees Hashirama running down the road with a face like fear, Mito knows what must have happened.

Hashi is running out of the village, alone and without a squad or any backup, which means he is chasing someone. There is only one person who he would bother to pursue like that, and only one person who would flee.

The knowledge twists in Mito's gut, a tangled, sickening thing; she sees the future like a film, blurred around the edges. Hashirama will chase the man he loves to an edge; any edge, some place where collision is inevitable. They will fight, of course. And Hashirama will lose, if he fights alone. He will lose, because her husband would rather die than kill Madara. Mito is sure of this. And the village will not stand, if he dies like that, by the hand of an Uchiha far away. Konoha, losing its leader, will crumble from within.

She thinks of Tobirama for a moment, as she stands in her doorway. She thinks of the child.

But there is no time to fetch her lover, to enlist his help, and without Hashirama and Konoha this child will live in the word _she _grew up in; a world where war is omnipresent and every clan goes hungry. Her baby deserves better.

She stands for a moment, still frozen, but choices must be made.

Mito's husband is running.

Like a good wife, she follows.

Out of Konoha, through the forest, under a sky that should not be so tranquil, she follows, praying that she will be fast enough.

Mito tracks Hashirama's path for many miles, following the places where he moved the trees aside to allow passage, seeing smoke rise in the distance, a beacon of battle. The sun sinks lower towards the horizon as she runs; the sky grows dark.

At last, she reaches a place under the open sky; a place where a river should meander lazily past trees, a place which should be a gentle rise of hills skirted by the forest; the border of the Land of Fire.

She knows what the place _should _be.

It has changed.

The river crashes over exposed rocks now, spilling itself across a wall of cliffs newly ripped from the heart of the hills. Trees lie like broken bodies, their limbs tangled by the will of Mokuton and the ravages of Katon-wrought fire. The moon, a bloated, luminescent thing heavy above the distant mountains, casts sharp shadows.

But Mito barely registers the decimated landscape, because her eyes are fixed on a terrible sight. Across the valley which should not be there, Hashirama rides a moving current of timber, the scroll he wields an unfurled line of white. Madara, high on the cliff, shouts something unintelligible, but he is only a secondary concern. Below the Uchiha, its mouth open to roar at Hashirama, crouches a beast too massive to belong in the world, an immense red fox with nine thrashing tails.

_Kyuubi no Yoko. _The name presents itself from the underbelly of Mito's memory; a story transmitted in secret by members of her clan. _Kyuubi. _A tailed beast. One of the nine ultimate challenges to a wielder of fuinjutsu.

How…?

And then, across the impossible carnage of stone and forest which lies before her in the dark, Mito sees Kyuubi charge, leaping at the place where Hashirama stands. He dodges, leaping just free of one clawed paw, and Madara shouts again. The Uchiha's eyes are pinpricks of red light in the distance. His eyes…

Mangekyou. Of course. Genjutsu powerful enough to control even one of the tailed beasts. Madara is commanding the fox.

And Mito knows, then, what might be done. The sounds of splintering wood, of water ripped from its river-bed and scattered over stone echo beneath the roaring of the demon; the moon still hangs in the sky, fat with stolen light. Hashirama is losing, maybe, but the limbs of trees reach out and tangle themselves across the red fur of the fox, and it screeches in anger.

For a moment, the lights of Madara's eyes across the wreckage flicker out.

If Hashirama could keep the creature still for long enough… oh. A terrible idea; magnificent and arrogant.

How long has it been since Mito fought a battle? Too long. She trains, still, within the confines of Konoha, but this is not an exercise. This is the two most powerful shinobi on the face of the earth fighting by means of a chakra demon. This is the kind of lover's quarrel gods have, in the old stories.

Mito's mind is oddly calm, watching her husband struggle with the Kyuubi, watching Madara orchestrate the demon. She was always analytical in fights; it was her greatest asset, once, when she was being taught the jutsu of her clan along with other children.

But this…

Mito is the Hokage's wife, and deals with powerful shinobi, but it has been years since she created a complex seal. There is the baby, too; Mito is not far along in her pregnancy, but danger exists. Every kunoichi is wary of meddling with such things for fear of giving birth to a monster. The risk is great, even for someone like her, who took to fuinjutsu like a fish to water. This would be something done to herself, done in the dark while the future of Konoha is at stake and a madman tries to wield Kyuubi no Yoko like a sword.

But if she watches Hashirama die now, after chasing him across the Land of Fire to save him for the village, for the world, Mito will never forgive herself.

Tobirama. What will she tell him? _"Hashirama's dead, you're Hokage, I left him to be murdered because I was afraid." _If Mito dies now, attempting this, at least she will never have to say that. At least she will have tried.

When she reached the place where she now stands, the edge of a valley carved into the earth for the sake of one man's anger, the thought of Tobi held Mito back. She has much to lose, and the idea of never seeing him again gave her pause.

A sound like the anguished crackle of a forest fire held at bay spreads into the sky. The Kyuubi is crouched, its head raised to keen in fury, the bonds of Mokuton wrapped with spider-web complexity across its immense body.

Madara too cries out, a more piercing sound than that of the demon, and Mito sees him charge Hashirama, scythe raised to kill.

She cannot go back to Tobirama and tell him of a ruined village, a dead Hokage, a child who, while safe inside her for now, will grow up without hope. She cannot.

"Hashirama! Hold onto the fox!" Mito screams, and she leaps from her vantage point into the destruction, her hands already forming seals.

Mito carries Hashirama home, when the fight is over.

She, knocked unconscious by the final impact of her executed plan, wakes to the pale, flushed light of dawn shining on cracked ground and decimated timber. She sits up, slowly at first, and, as has become habit, lays one hand across her belly.

The memories return. Mito looks down with alarmed eyes and sees the elegant calligraphy of terrible imprisonment swirling itself over her stomach like the work of an insane tattoo artist.

She feels the power of an angry fox in a cage within her soul, kept in by bars of chakra and lines of black fuinjutsu.

Mito gets to her feet, slowly, slowly, and sees the bodies. Ten feet away from her lies Hashirama, his continued life evident only in the slow rise and fall of his chest, the mist of his breath in the cold air. Beside him is Madara, black hair matted with blood, his face paler than the full moon. The Uchiha's eyes are open, but the sharingan has ended; Madara's gaze is dead and dark, now. He does not breathe. When Mito walks over to grasp one slender wrist, there is no pulse.

She sighs. They have won, Konoha has won, but for Hashirama his pain is barely beginning.

Mito stoops and hoists her husband's body over her shoulders, cumbersome as a sack of flour. She has little training in medical jutsu, so they must go, now, back to the village. The idea of waiting for help or calling for it does not occur to Mito. She is exhausted, her child might be born dead or carrying the Kyuubi's demonic chakra, and to stay here with Madara's corpse is intolerable, unendurable. Rationality is eclipsed by the desire to go home.

Mito begins to walk, slowly, slowly, the mouth of the valley before her and the sound of crashing water behind. The river, once tranquil, now throws itself down over sheer cliffs before fleeing away into the forest.

_Jinchuuriki. Jinchuuriki_. The word conjures itself in time to Mito's steps, a title or a curse. _Jinchuuriki_. That is what she is, now. The carrier of a demon; the vessel for a monster.

She is not angry or upset, perhaps because she has no strength to do anything but move forward, step by step, over the broken ground. But maybe this lack of bitterness is also because Mito chose her path. She chose to make this seal, to save this man slung over her shoulder. And there is nothing Kyuubi no Yoko can do to her which Madara has not done to Hashirama, with his anger, with his death.

Poor Hashi. He is hurt far worse than she is.

Four hours into Mito's journey, along a road she has found winding through the trees in the direction of Konoha, she meets Tobirama.

He stands like a statue when he first sees her, gaze flickering over her torn clothes, the cuts on her face and hands, the body she carries. For a moment there is abject terror in his crimson eyes (not blazing like Madara's murder-bought sharingan, but eyes like water scarlet-stained, cool and deep).

Terror. Then Tobirama sees that Hashi is breathing, that his brother is alive, and the revelation is enough. He reaches out to takes the weight of the unconscious body, and Mito expels a breath, long and slow.

It was a hard journey.

"I came to find you," Tobi says. "You were gone, the Uchiha was gone, and they said that Hashi was chasing him. I followed you as soon as I found out. What happened? Where's Madara?"

"Madara is dead," Mito says to her lover, blank-voiced, bleached by effort. "He called the Kyuubi, so I sealed it away before it could cause trouble."

Tobirama stares.

"Where?" he asks, one word.

Mito shrugs a little.

"Into myself," she says. "It was all I could do. Hashi held it with Mokuton, and I sealed it. After that things were over quickly enough. Madara leached out all his chakra controlling the fox, I think. All three of us lost consciousness, in the end."

Tobirama looks at her then, over her husband's broken form clutched in his arms, and that one look is enough. She does not care, in that moment, if the village never knows what she has done, if she is nothing but a weapon all her life, if Hashirama is the hero they remember. Tobi sees. There is nothing but respect for her in his eyes; knowledge of her actions, and awe in honor of them.

They carry Hashirama back to Konoha, together.

Eight months later, the Senju brothers stand like sentinels outside Mito's room, tense with worry. They have been here for almost twelve hours, unable to bear the pain on Mito's face or the fear in her midwife's eyes.

Most of the village has been eager for this day, still rejoicing that their Hokage came back, that he won, that soon he will have a family of his own. Even the Uchiha clan seems quietly glad to have lost their volatile, half-mad leader. Konoha awaits news of the birth, complacent and pleased.

But for those who know Mito's dangerous secret, that she is now host to a demon wrested from Madara's control, expectation is tinged with the fear that something will go wrong.

Tobirama looks at his brother out of narrowed crimson eyes.

The Hokage stands by the door with a blank face, still as a statue. Scars from the battle with Madara still lie across his cheeks, vivid reminders. Ever since he woke up in the hospital, Hashirama has not been the same. He says, sometimes, that his dreams are strange, that his chakra is somehow wrong, depleted or infected. For days at a time, he does not speak.

Tobirama has not uttered a word in almost twelve hours, but his elder sibling has been silent for eight months.

Suddenly, anger rises in Tobi's mind, a whiplash of fire. He is unsettled, afraid, and fear does not like to be alone.

"She saved your life," he says to his brother. "Mito did. She saved the village. And now she could be dying, could be giving birth to a monster, and you're just standing there like a dead man."

Hashirama turns towards him, and a damn breaks.

"I _am _a dead man," he says, each word a falling stone. "I wanted so much once, Tobi! I wanted to build this village out of many clans, I wanted the killing to end, I wanted to live in a world where children don't starve and twelve-year-old boys don't have to go to war."

"And? You've done that! You're still doing that! Mito and I are helping you!"

They face each other now, postures tense, fists curled into balls.

Then Hashirama slumps, shaking his head as if the effort of movement is too much. He cannot hold outrage or anger, these days. He cannot hold much of anything.

"If I could have kept Madara here, I would have had peace," he says. "Getting him to stay, convincing him that his clan is safe here, that… Izuna wouldn't have wanted him to keep fighting; if I could have done that, I could have done _anything_. But instead I loved him and fought him and _killed him_, or let him kill himself by overusing the mangekyou. I failed."

Tobirama stares at his brother, not knowing what to say. The stress of this day, the weight of knowing that Mito might die giving birth; it erupted, and he lashed out. But Hashirama can't take harshness, anymore. It hits him, then, a thing Mito said two weeks after they got back; that Hashirama is the one who lost the fight. Madara, vanished Madara gone from their world, was victorious.

"What am I living for?" the first Hokage asks quietly. "What, Tobi? You're living for Mito and that team of genin you have and for your child. But what am I living for?"

They stand in silence. Tobirama does not know what to say.

But the door behind Hashirama opens, and a woman's head peeks out.

"Come in, please," she says, and a smile splits itself across her face. "It's all right. The baby is normal; no abnormalities of chakra at all."

She looks at Hashirama.

"Your wife is fine too, sir," she adds. "You have a son."

Hearing that, neither of the Senju brothers care whose child has really been born. Mito is alive.

Mito, holding the boy, looks up at her two men. She is tired; infinitely tired, but it is all right. All right.

Mito can tell that Tobirama is happy beyond measure and trying to hide it. She smiles at him, exhausted but pleased. She came back with Hashirama for his sake; when he becomes Hokage some day, he will have a village to rule.

And Hashi… Mito turns her head towards him, steeling herself for the impact of his face made blank with grief, as it has been since the battle.

Tobirama laughs aloud, and they both stare at him.

"Hashi, my brother," he says, "Konoha hasn't stopped needing you. And you have a son now; the whole world is expecting you to be his father. That's worth life, isn't it? A child? A child is always worth hope."

Mito, who can guess what must have happened, what despair her husband must have expressed, waiting outside for so long, watches him.

And Hashirama smiles; faintly, but a smile. His eyes are sad; they will be sad for the rest of his life, Mito suspects, because some scars run too deep for healing. His dreams may never leave him; life has been pulled out of his hands, out of his blood. A little bit of the first Hokage died, fighting Madara.

But the smile is enough.

The midwife walks over to them and taps Hashi on the shoulder.

"What are you going to name your son, sir?" she asks, oblivious to the undercurrents between these three people, complex and entangled.

Tobirama leans over to his brother.

"Yes, Hashi, what are you going to name him?"

_Permission_, Mito thinks. _That is good._

The new, slightly broken smile on Hashirama's face has not faded.

"Kazuki," he says, "Name him Kazuki."

Tobirama laughs again, and Mito, feeling the weight of her child against her chest and the simmering, silent presence of the conquered Kyuubi within her, nearly laughs with him.

She has won. She has won. She has stood beside her husband, she has saved Konoha; she has in her arms a baby boy who will not die for lack of anything. And Hashirama has hope enough to keep on going through the world; just enough hope.

Mito is the vessel of the Kyuubi, a woman who will spend her life acting as a cage, but it does not matter. She can fight a demon. Demons are easy. It was learning to be alive that was hard.

_Over sixty years into the future, Mito smiles. An answer._

_ "__We came here to be the vessels of the Kyuubi," she says to Kushina, "But before that, we must find love and fill the vessel with it. To live; that is the means by which we conquer the tasks before us. Learn to love, child, and you can serve this village without any bitterness. The first Hokage taught me that, you know; to love, and have hope, even in the face of death."_

_**End**_


	5. Epilogue

**A/N: **Okay, so I really wanted to write this, but GOD DAMN TIMELINES. It's bad enough when I write original stuff and can make up the history myself, but having to research a hundred years of shinobi wars on the internet is not conductive to the scandalous fun, guys. So sorry if I screwed up majorly; I tried. I made up a lot of stuff, like about how Hashi dies and Mito's son and various other details, but oh well.

This is also fairly vague, since I was trying to give an overview and make a point. Someday, perhaps, I'll write something longer about Mito's life, but it gets so sad…

Anyway, I'll stop complaining and let you read the epilogue. It's full of death, but I'm quite fond of it. I hope you consider it a fitting (secondary) ending.

Epilogue_

_After the conversation in her room, Kushina is taken away to join the Ninja Academy, and Mito is left alone. The elders of the village inform her that, when it is necessary, the girl will be brought back and the transfer of the Kyuubi will be made. Their voices are hushed and respectful, skirting the truth, but their meaning is obvious; Mito is unnecessary now, a container at the end of her use, and the only thing to do now is wait._

Three years later, Mito is dying.

She realizes it on the day that she cannot get out of her bed; the strength has gone out of her limbs, drained away like water from a sieve. She feels faded, almost bleached, as if all the color of life has been slowly taken away, and the loss has just now been comprehended.

Other than the initial shock, the following weeks are peaceful ones. Death does not trouble Mito, now; she has walked beside it for many years, and seen its face so many times that reconciliation is easy.

Oh yes, Mito knows death well.

She met it first in Madara's blank eyes, that day after the battle. Then, it was a thing removed from herself; an alien sensation compounded by pity for Hashi, whose left more than a little of his soul there in the Valley of the End.

After that first premonition of what it would be like to face such loss, she was granted a hiatus. A decade of time; ten short years, in which her son grew up in a happy Konoha, hopeful for peace. Kazuki was a strong boy, with eyes like hers and hair the color of the earth. He bore little resemblance to his father, for which they were grateful.

There was a balance, during those years, carefully maintained; between Mito and Tobirama and Hashi, with the ghost of Madara an ever-present sensation, lingering in the Hokage's eyes. They lived in triangles, then, with Kazuki and Konoha as their focal points, the reasons it all worked. There was balance, and it lasted, for a while.

Then came the First Shinobi World War, and Mito learned to know the feel of death better than the smile on her son's face, better than the sound of her lover's voice in darkness.

Death on her hands, in her clothes, in the faces of solemn shinobi and the fear in children's eyes. Death's taste was bitter, its color was red, and its existence was omnipresent, cloaking everything, clinging like the rain.

In that war, Mito lost everything.

First, Hashirama, in a battle against Kumogakure. She had been away on a mission in Suna, fighting as everyone else was. When Mito returned, she was met by Tobirama in his new robes of red and white, with Kazuki beside him, tear-stained and pale-faced.

That death was like a kunai in the gut; too swift for reckoning, terrible in its effects. Mito, Tobirama, all of Konoha; they did not realize what Hashirama had been to them, until he was taken away in a moment by a stray jutsu, plucked out of life.

After that, five years. The war dragged on, clinging to the world like a tick to the leg of a dog, sucking away blood, life, strength. Kazuki grew up during those years, her round-faced, pleasant boy, into a young shinobi with a serious manner and the eyes of a child who was forced to age too quickly.

She cried, at night, for Hashirama and his desperate nobility, his wasted hope. But Tobirama was there to cry with her, and so it was all right.

The second time Mito recognized the shadow of death was in the face of her son, during that time after Hashirama's murder, left there like a mark.

Oh yes, there has been much death in her life, and many more manifestations of its scars. But there is one reason which Mito does not fear it now; one reason, and one man, who died too soon and left her in a world which didn't fit, which had been bleached of colors.

Five years after the loss of Hashirama, in the days when Konoha was just beginning to believe in victory, to trust that its children would grow up, Tobirama sacrificed himself for the sake of his team, on a mission against Cloud ninja, and the world ended.

Death was different, this time.

Hashirama had been a shock shared by the village, by the world. They had shared her horror at the easy randomness of death.

Of course, when Hiruzen Sarutobi staggered home with blood on his clothes and sorrow on his face to tell them that the Second Hokage was dead, Konoha mourned.

Mito was told the news by her grief-battered son, who had lost, in the space of five years, both the father-figures in his life, just as a splintered Tobirama had been courier of the first tragedy.

If the end of Hashirama had been a crippling blow, this time death was a creeping sickness, a slow and terrible catharsis, paralyzing in its ache. Mito, over weeks, months, years, accumulated a line of places where Tobirama was not, a catalogue of empty spaces in her head, in her life.

Mito, fifty years in the future, lies in her wide bed and smiles at the ceiling, letting her eyes fall closed. Things are not so bad now, in comparison to what they were then. Who knows; she might even see Tobi again, wherever she is going.

In the years she internally categorizes as 'the rest of her life,' Mito lost her son to the Second Shinobi War, and her grandson to a misson. She watched her other grandchild, Tsunade, succumb to grief and regret, wracked by fear of yet more loss. She has kept the Kyuubi within her body for the sake of this village for so long, and seen so many of its children go of to war, never to return.

But Mito has endured, because she had lost everything once already, and knows what it is like. She endured, because for every death she has faced hope has been offered

Madara, although he will never know the lesson he provided, showed her that weighing the memory of the dead over the peace of the living is a terrible mistake. From Hashirama, Mito has learned that love's worth is greater than the pain of its regrets.

Her son, who left her his children to raise, told her before he left to go to war that to die for something greater than yourself was what his father and his uncle had done, and that he would be glad to follow in their paths. She wishes, sometimes, that she would have told him the whole story of Hashirama and Madara, of her own affair. Kazuki, Mito considers, would have understood.

Nawaki, her grandson, who managed to spend more time being alive in his twelve years than most people accomplish in a lifetime, had taught her simply by existing.

Many lessons. Many people who have left her, one by one.

Mito thinks of Tobirama, the greatest loss and the hardest of lessons. She talks to him, occasionally, in these days which pull the world out of her, an unwinding thread. Maybe he can hear, somehow, and maybe not, but he is still worth talking to.

He is the memory she holds on to the hardest, now. He is important.

The third time in her life that Mito dealt with mortality was on the day Tobirama sacrificed himself. She looked into the mirror and saw death's imprint on her own face, etched with careful, uncompromising hands.

When they lost Hashi, in the first frenzy of terror, Mito had asked Tobirama what she would do if he didn't come back some day, or if Kazuki didn't; she had asked what any citizen on Konoha in that time could do, facing a village at war.

And Tobirama had told her that if he died for Konoha she would have to live for it, if she could.

He had smiled, Mito remembers, although the expression was painful and sad.

"Whichever one of us survives will have a harder task, I think," he had said. "I hope I die first, if we can't die together. Then it will be your job to live, not mine. You're the stronger of us, anyway. You always were."

_On the day Mito Uzumaki dies, they bring Kushina to her. The girl has grown taller, Mito notices through half-closed eyes, and her round face is graceful rather than plump. Kushina will be quite a beauty, in a few years._

_ "Grandmother," the young woman whispers, leaning down to Mito's ear. "I didn't know you used to be married to the first Hokage."_

_ Mito smiles. Oh, the marvelous way history hides secrets, when it suits historians._

_ "Yes," she says, "I was."_

_ "I'll be just like you," Kushina announces in a quiet voice, smiling. "I'm going to marry Minato Namikaze, someday. He's amazing, and he's going to be the fourth Hokage when we grow up, everyone says so. I remember what you told me, about loving. I'll be a good jinchuuriki, I promise."_

_ Then the solemn shinobi of the clan move the girl away, ready to begin the transfer._

_ "Well, fox," Mito thinks, "Any last words?"_

_ But Kyuubi no Yoko is silent. He has long since ceased to cause trouble for her. His chaos has no place inside her head, and has not for a long time._

"_You're the stronger of us, anyway. You always were," Tobirama's voice says, an echo of a memory._

_ Mito has been strong for over forty years, without him. Now, a vessel at the end of her service, she will not have to be strong, anymore._


End file.
